Mass Effect fanfiction: Lonely Heart
by Dionne Jinn
Summary: My Mass Effect fanfiction in Garrus' POV. Published earlier in deviantART. Rated "M" for future content and just to be safe, as chapter specific rating might not be an option here.
1. Hunt

Chapter 1 – Hunt

"Someone _should learn how to drive_," Garrus Vakarian thought shaking his head while he investigated the damaged Mako in the cargo hold of the _Normandy_. He held a great deal of respect toward Commander Shepard, but her driving was—to put it mildly—reckless. Mako was designed to be used in extreme conditions, but at times he thought that Shepard was asking too much from the vehicle and it was his job to fix anything her driving broke. "_Next time she comes around, I'll tell her to stop driving like mad, I sure will_," Garrus thought.

"Hi there," Shepard's voice jarred him out from his thoughts. "How's she looking?"

Garrus started to turn to face her—he fully intended to speak his mind about the matter—but she was standing much closer than he had expected and for a reason he couldn't understand her hand, which was resting right next to his, gave him a pause. He had never really paid any attention to her hands before—most of the time he remembered seeing them glowed and gripping a handle of a gun expertly—but now her hand was bare and he noticed that it looked rather small compared to his.

"Uh..." Garrus stammered trying to kick his brain back to gear, but he wasn't able to force his eyes away from those five tiny fingers—why humans had so many digits, anyway? "She's perfect, ma'am. Just perfect."

Desperately Garrus wished that Shepard wouldn't realise he had found himself talking about her hand instead of Mako. He wanted to take her hand into his and find out what human skin felt like, but Commander Shepard was still his commanding officer—she always treated him with friendship and spoke to him as she would speak to any comrade, but the basic military doctrines forbid any intimacy between a superior officer and a subordinate.

And all of a sudden the whole encounter was over.

"I won't take up more of your time," Shepard said nodding. "Just wanted to check in with you, Garrus."

"Yeah, no problem," Garrus said talking to Shepard's back as she headed toward Urdnod Wrex, who was standing on the other side of the cargo bay. "I'll be here if you need me, Shepard."

He leaned on the Mako stopping his repairs for a moment, he let his eyes rest on Shepard's form that seemed almost minuscule compared to the large krogan with whom she was talking. Wrex appeared agitated about something and was gesturing violently—for a second Garrus wanted to hurry there to protect the commander in case the angry krogan would get out of control—but Shepard stood her ground and talked to the alien calmly. After nodding to the krogan for a final time Shepard turned and headed toward the lift that would take her back up to the command deck or where ever else she would go on board the _Normandy_.

Garrus turned away, but got the eye of Ashley Williams—how long the human woman had been watching him?—who was doing rifle maintenance not too far away from him. He knew the woman didn't like him, nor did she trust him, for the simple reason that he was a turian—he had overheard a part of conversation between Williams and Shepard earlier, when she had been telling the commander something about her family's history with his people. Her attitude toward him had gradually turned milder as she had seen him accompany Shepard on some of the most dangerous missions they had performed, but she still held some reservations about him. He really didn't think he was good at reading human bodylanguage, but the way Williams now looked at him made him feel uncomfortable—had she noticed something odd between him and Shepard?—had there even been anything worth noticing? Or was he just becoming paranoid?

Turning back to the Mako he realised that he had completely forgotten about all the complains he had prepared for Shepard about the way she was driving. But the fact remained that he needed to fix the damaged vehicle before they would start their next mission, so he firmly put all disturbing thoughts out from his mind and concentrated on his work.

"Two hours to target," Joker's voice announced though _Normandy_'s intercom.

"_Sooner than I thought, damn it_," Garrus thought as he pulled out his tools. "_But I'll get it done_."

One and half an hour later, when Garrus had just finished his repairs, Shepard returned to the cargo deck accompanied by Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, both of them in full armour and carrying weapons. If the two of them hadn't been from two different races Garrus would have thought of them as sisters, Shepard seemed to place a lot of responsibility on the young tech—the quarian and Garrus himself had been with the commander when she had tracked Saren down on Ilos, they had been with her when she battled the rogue Spectre on the Citadel. While Shepard had been adamant about sharing all the credit of their victory with her entire crew, Garrus knew she kept a special photograph taken by captain—councilor—Anderson which featured only the three of them.

"You and Mako about ready to go, Garrus?" Shepard asked as the two women walked up to him.

"Yeah," Garrus said. "Just let me grap my gun."

"Fifteen minutes," Joker announced. "I'm scanning for a landing site."

"So?" Garrus asked as he came back and crawled inside the vehicle with Shepard and Tali. "What are we after? A downed probe or something more violent?"

"A smuggler OP," Shepard said. "So be ready to use your gun."

"I thought they were sending us after the geth? This is waste of time," Garrus said before he could stop himself—it wasn't his place to guestion the orders, but hunting smugglers after learning about Reapers didn't sit well with him.

"I know, Garrus," Shepard sighed and he knew she understood even the things he had not said. "But we can't force them to see reason in this matter if they don't want to see it. Anderson is doing what he can, but..."

"Drop in ten," Joker interrupted. "Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, GO."

And with that they were on their way again, Mako lurching under them as it fell through the atmosphere of yet another planet. All three of them pit their teeth hard and kept their tongues back so that they wouldn't accidentally bite on it when the vehicle would make contact with the surface below.

Mako stopped bounching and Shepard pushed few loose strands of hair behind her ear before grapping the controls and heading straight toward their target—Garrus glanced across to see scanner readings scrolling in front of Tali's station—that was located on the other side of a mountain range. Shepard was going to do it again: drive across unnecessarily hard terrain hoping to sneak up on their enemies, who would expect them to come through one of the openings. Garrus admitted that the tactic had its merit, but often Mako took as much damage from the rough travel as it did in a fire fight.

The fight against the guards of the outpost was brutal but fast: falling Mako took down three of the smugglers' mechs before the machines even noticed their approach and Garrus gunned down four smugglers while Shepard simply drove over the remaining two mechs.

"Scanner is clear," Tali reported from her post.

Garrus turned to look at Shepard and noticed that the stray hair had fallen across her face again. His hand was suddenly itching to reach out and pull the hair back behind her ear, but she did that by herself—the movement was careless and somehow impatient. She pulled out her helmet and put it on as the air outside Mako was not breathable, and they would have to cover the ground between the outpost entrance and the vehicle by foot. Garrus put on his own helmet and readied his rifle.

Taking out the few smugglers that had been inside the outpost was as fast as the battle outside had been. Shepard's well-placed grenade took out nearly half of their enemies, while a biotic burst send the other half flying, where they were easy pickings for Garrus' precise shots.

As the last of the enemies fell Tali hurried to computer console and started scanning it with her omni-tool. Garrus covered the tech while Shepard moved around the room to see if she could find something usefull.

"Find anything?" Shepard asked coming over to the console with several ammo clips and two new rifles.

"Nothing usefull," Tali said shaking her head. "I'm starting to think Garrus was right. This mission is waste of time. As far as I can tell these smugglers didn't even know about those missing ships. Or geth."

Garrus stared at the quarian as did Shepard—Tali had never before guestioned the work they were doing.

"Let's head back to the _Normandy_," Shepard said as Tali turned off the computer. "There is still one more system in this sector whe should check. If that turns out to be a dead end too, we head back to the Citadel."


	2. Disaster

Chapter 2 – Disaster

The trip to their last target seemed to be just as uneventful as the whole mission had been—they would arrive into the orbit, do some scanning, land the Mako if deemed necessary and be done with it in a few hours. Garrus closed is toolkit and leaned on one of Mako's wheels. As frustrating as their fruitless geth-hunt had been so far, at least he wasn't back at C-Sec banging his head on the byrocratic walls the system had set up. And spending time with Shepard and her crew definitely beated hauling criminals into cells around Citadel. He closed his eyes and rested his head on the wheel—he really liked it here.

"Brace for evasive manouvres!" Joker's voice came over the intercom suddenly and Garrus felt the cargo deck lurch under his feet.

"_What the..._?" Garrus thought grapping a hold the vehicle that was too heavy to be shaken by the jumping of the ship. The cargo hold didn't have any viewports so he had no idea what was going on, but the blaring of alarms ordered the immediate evacuation of the ship. Garrus saw Wrex climbing back on his feet among random pieces of equipment that had been thrown around by the violent movements.

"Ah..." Garrus turned around to see Williams crawling toward one of the escape pods, but she had taken a hit to her leg and was unable to stand.

"Williams!" Garrus called hurrying to her side. "Wrex! She needs help!"

"What happened?" the woman asked dazzled, when the turian and the krogan pulled her up and supported her between them as they headed toward the nearest escape shuttle. "Where's Shepard?"

Garrus glanced over toward the lift which moved between the cargo hold and the command deck. One of the tanks that held MAKO's fuel rolled across the deck shattering when it hit the corner of the lift—seconds later the fuel caught fire as one of the emergency lights sparkled. The Normandy was still jumping madly around and every movement send pieces of equipment flying, some of them started burning too and blocked the way toward the lift.

"She must be on the command deck," Garrus answered. "We can't get to her now. There's a fire between us and the lift. Into the escape shuttle, Williams. You too, Wrex."

"Shepard is my battlemaster," Wrex said. "I must help her to battle this enemy."

"You can't get to her!" Garrus shouted more angrily than he had intented—he recognised that part of his anger was born out of frustration and feeling of helplessness. He would have done anything if he could have gotten past the fire and been able to help Shepard on the main deck, but he knew that any attempt to get there would be a suicide, which wouldn't do any good to the commander. "You help her best by living to fight another day. Move it!"

They pushed Williams into the escape pod first and Wrex went in after her. Standing there Garrus looked back toward the lift—the flames of the fire were rising higher than before, there was no hope of getting across alive—but he wanted to try, to make a mad dash through and find Shepard.

"Vakarian?" Williams asked from her seat.

"Where's the requisition officer?" Garrus asked suddenly realising that he hadn't seen the human. "He was down here with us. Did either one of you see, what happened to him?"

"No, I haven't seen him," Williams said trying to get back up from her seat. "Maybe..."

Suddenly another lurch of the ship almost threw Garrus down and forced Williams to sit back down. Among the burning wreakage Garrus thought he saw a form of a human body, engulfed in flames—he could only hope that the requisition officer had died before he had started burning. Anyway he was beyond their help.

"Damn it," Garrus cursed, sat on a bench across from Wrex and punched for the ejection of the escape shuttle. "Damn it, damn it, damn it..."

Silence. None of them spoke. None of them could see, what had happened to the Normandy. None of them knew if there were any other escape shuttles around them. Time passed—was it minutes or hours? they didn't know—and they all just sat there in silence.

Garrus found himself thinking about Shepard. Had it only been yesterday when they had stood in the cargo bay and he had been thinking about holding her hand? Had it only been yesterday when they had been sitting in the MAKO, with Shepard's rebellious hair falling on her face? Why hadn't he taken her had in his when he had a chance? Why hadn't he acted on his impulse of pulling her hair away from her eyes?

"_When the Alliance comes to save us, I will_," Garrus thought leaning back on his chair. "_When I see her again, I'll take her in my arms and just hold her close. I want to know what her hair feels like in my fingers_."

A metallic glang suddenly brought all three of them back to the present. Uncertainly they looked at each other, none of them knowing if it was friends or enemies who had gotten a hold of their escape shuttle. Their only weapon was Garrus' knife unless Wrex's natural strength was counted as a weapon—in any case they were ill prepared to face enemies.

The door to their shuttle slid open and revealed a human man dressed in Alliance uniform—Garrus breathed out in relief as did Williams.

"Wrex! Ashley! Garrus!" Liara T'Soni called as the asari saw them coming out from the shuttle tentatively. "Are you all right?"

"What happened?" Williams asked from the blue skinned alien. "Do you know where Skip- Shepard is?"

"She went to help Joker," Liara answered. "She told me to make sure everyone was evacuated and then get out from the ship, while she went to take care of him. I haven't heard about her since then."

"Who was it? The geth?" Garrus asked.

"Geth don't have that kind of weaponry," Tali said joining the group. "It must have been something—someone—else."

"We have located the last shuttle with a distress beacon," one of the Alliance people informed Williams. "It's transponder signature matches the one that was closest to the pilot station."

While the Alliance military tried to hold back the people they had rescued from the Normandy it was becoming impossible—the crew, even those who were wounded, gathered around the last shuttle waiting for the door to open. Garrus moved to the fron row, he wanted to be there to wellcome Shepard, he wanted—

The door slid open revealing Joker alone in the shuttle. He was kneeling at the door—he hadn't even been secured with the safety harness—and his face were white as a sheet with expression of horror etched to his every feature. He looked up to the people surrounding him and shook his head sadly while tears rolled down his face.

"No..." Garrus whispered. "She can't be..."

"Mr. Moreau?" an authoritave voice said. "What happened to the commander?"

"She was spaced, sir," Joker said his voice dull and expressionless. "She..."

Bowing his head Garrus turned away feeling hollow.

"_She can't be dead, oh please, great galaxy, don't let her be dead_," he thought as he walked further away from the group and sat on a small crate. Liara and Tali were hugging each other and Garrus saw that at least the asari was crying—Tali's face was covered by her helmet, as always, but he could see she was trebling. Wrex was banging his big fists to the side of the shuttle making small dents to the surface, it felt like the banging was echoing through Garrus' head. He simply sat there, staring at the others—he had spend almost half of his life in military and had lost friends before, but for some reason he wasn't willing to think about, loosing Shepard like this felt worse than anything.

Shepard had been titled a hero even before they had met, but she had become even more so after they had taken down Saren. But Garrus found that she had been more than that for him—she had been a guide, a friend, a mentor. He had wanted to become like her, he had longed for those small words of praise she gave him from a job well done, he had felt happy when she had stopped by his post in the cargo hold to change few words. She always had an easy laugh and warm smile—and her unruly hair gave her a playful appearance even in the heat of battle.

"_Oh, Shepard, what am I going to do without you_?" Garrus asked silently from himself. "_What anyone of us is going to do without you_?"

Standing up was suddenly the hardest thing in the world for him to do.


	3. Breaking Up

Chapter 3 – Breaking up

Garrus was playing with his drink while the four of them sat in a small booth in what had once been the nightclub called Flux. He, Wrex, Tali and Liara had been brought to the Citadel after the destruction of the _Normandy_, but Ashley Williams—who had been with them earlier—had already headed out with Alliance military leaving her alien crewmates to take care of themselves.

"What Shepard saw in her visions about Protheans is going to be a big help for my future work," Liara said poking at a nut that had fallen on the table. "What ever I'm going to find out, I'll dedicate it to her."

"What Shepard showed me about my own people, about genophage, I will use to help my people," Wrex said sternly. "She showed me what it means to be a battlemaster and now I can be battlemaster to my people."

"I have to take information we found out about the geth back to flotilla," Tali said. "Shepard helped me to complete my pilgrimage and I owe everything to her memory. What are you going to do, Garrus?"

"I don't know," Garrus answered. "I guess I'll reaply to C-Sec, they lost a lot of people during the battle and it is my duty to help. When things settle down I will try to get into Spectre training."

All three of Garrus' compations stared at him.

"Ummm..." Garrus started embarrased. "Shepard didn't mention to any of you that I was once considered for a special training in order to become a Spectre? She kind of encouraged me into that direction..."

"I'm sure you are going to make a good Spectre, Garrus," Liara said smiling. "But no, Shepard didn't speak about that to any of us. I guess she thought it was something just between the two of you."

"You're right, Liara," Tali said. "I think Shepard never spoke about things behind one's back."

"Battlemaster was honest to the bone," Wrex said. "Krogan despise trickery, falsehood and lies, and Shepard never showed any of those."

"That Spectre thing, it wasn't really a secret," Garrus said shrugging, but felt warm inside as he knew that what he had told Shepard had not been spread around. "I never told her not to tell you about it, but I wasn't ready to bring it up either."

"It's all right, Garrus," Tali assured him. "I'm just sad she can't be here to bring your name up for candidacy herself, like I think she would have wanted."

"You think she wanted to put my name up with the Coucil?" Garrus asked surprised.

"Why not?" Liara asked. "She always respected you, and she liked to have you around for the missions. I think she was already preparing you to become a Spectre at some point."

"As Liara said, you'll make a wonderful Spectre," Tali said. "But why didn't you try it earlier if the chance was offered to you?"

"Because of my father," Garrus answered. "He doesn't like Spectres, and he wasn't happy when I ran off with Shepard and the rest of you leaving my C-Sec work. He is a C-Sec man through and through, but working with Shepard showed me how things get done outside the corps."

"She really knew, how to get things done her way," Wrex said nodding. "She knew when to speak with her gun."

"I don't think she would like to hear us talking like this," Tali pointed out shaking her head sadly. "She never used violence when it wasn't absolutely necessary. She actually talked down even Saren himself, no matter what Sovereign did with his body after that."

"Everyone seemed rather eager to put the blame on Saren for the whole mess," Liara said with a hint of bitterness in her voice. "But what Shepard said about the fight, it seems like Sovereign had just forced him to work with the Reapres against his will."

"Sovereign was controlling him," Garrus agreed. "But it doesn't change the fact that he betrayed the Coucil and all the races, willingly or not."

"You are being a bit hard on judgment, Garrus," Tali said placing her hand on his arm. "But in all honesty, can we really just go back to our previous lives after what happened?"

"No, I guess, we can't," Liara admitted throwing away the nut she had been playing with. "But we can't just stop living either, can we?"

"_I almost wish I could_," Garrus thought, but he would never say a thing like that out loud. "Let's take one last drink for Shepards memory now, and raise our glasses to her every year as long as we live."

"To the commander," Liara and Tali said raising their glasses in unison with him.

"To battlemaster," Wrex added joining the toast.

* * *

A week later even Wrex was gone from the Citadel and Garrus found himself feeling lonely without his former companions. Sitting in his office he idly stared at the report he was supposed to be filling in, but his mind was not at his task and his eyes drifted to a group photo of the _Normandy_'s crew that had been taken after Saren's defeat.

"Wake up, Garrus," Executor Pallin's voice cut into his thoughts. "You are daydreaming again. And it is not like you."

"I'm sorry, sir," Garrus replied forcing his attention back to his report.

Why the hell had he signed up with C-Sec again? The bureaucratic crap that filled the whole organization made it almost impossible for him to get anything done and some of the new rules that had come about since the battle of the Citadel made things even worse. And what was he doing in the Spectre training group? He was easily twice as old as the youngest turian in the group and much older than the oldest one—and he had seen more fighting than the rest of the group put together. The whole thing started to feel like a waste of time.

"_But what else can I do_?" he asked from himself.

In the end it took him over half a year to realise that he simply no longer fitted in with the C-Sec, and almost as long to understand that his Spectre training was not going well either.

"So, what are you going to do, Garrus?" his sister, Solana, asked when he finally called her to tell he was going to leave the Citadel and give up both his C-Sec career and his Spectre training.

"I still want to make a difference, Sol," Garrus said. "But I can't do it here. There has to be some place where I can really do something to help the people, without Council or C-Sec always watching over my shoulder."

"You know dad is going to hate this," Solana warned him. "He was already on the edge because you were in Spectre training, and mom is not doing that well, so..."

"I know, Sol, I know," Garrus sighed. "And I hate it when it all comes down on your head, but I can't take this anymore. At least on _Normandy_we got things done. Shepard..."

"Shepard, Shepard, Shepard!" Solana snapped. "She is all you talk about, Garrus. Did you have a fetish on her or something? What the hell did she do to you to make you leave the C-Sec in the first place?"

"Don't talk that way, Sol," Garrus countered angrily. "You didn't know her so you have no right to judge. She just happened to save the whole damned galaxy and now people freak out even if you mention her name. You have no idea what we had to face!"

"I'm sorry, Garrus, please forgive me," Solana pleaded when Garrus seemed like he intented to terminate the call. "I didn't mean to... Please, listen to me... You know we are all going through hard times right now. I just... Take care of yourself out there, okay?"

"I promise," Garrus said giving his sister the best smile he could manage. "You take care, too. And tell mom and dad that I love them."

"You should come home and tell them yourself," Solana said.

"You know I can't," Garrus answered shaking his head. "Dad would just kick me out. At least he'll listen to you. Listen... I'll call to you, when I get a chance."

"Yeah... right..." Solana didn't sound convinced. "Goodbye, Garrus."

"Goodbye, Sol," Garrus said closing the video call and filing in his resignation forms for C-Sec and Spectre corps.

He had been thinking about leaving for a while and had made some plans. He opened a page that allowed him to buy one way ticked on a transport off Citadel and to Omega station—some of his investigations on Citadel had pointed way to a group of criminals operating from Omega, but as there was no law there, he had no legal way of arresting them.

"_Well, if a C-Sec officer and a Spectre trainee can't take them out, maybe a private operator can_," he thought as he purchaged the ticket and erased his files from the computer.

He collected his things and headed out, only to meet Executor Pallin in the outer office.

"Are you serious about leaving, Garrus?" the Executor asked. "Your resignation..."

"I'm leaving, sir," Garrus cut him short—he was not in the mood for explaining things to his former boss. "I got other plans now."

"As you wish," Pallin nodded and stepped aside when Garrus walked past him toward the door. "Just be careful you do not turn out like Saren."

_Don't turn out like Saren_. Those words haunted Garrus as he walked through the Citadel for what he thought was the final time. _Don't turn out like Saren_, echoed through his head as he boarded the transport that was heading to Omega. Why did he found that comparison so unnerving?


	4. Deathwish

Chapter 4 – Deathwish

"Honestly, Garrus," Sidonis said shaking his head while the two of them were investigating the cargo they had intercepted. "Do you have a deathwish?"

Looking at the dead mercenaries who were lying haphazardly around the cargo hold Garrus thought about the matter. Was the work he was currently doing a sign that he had a deathwish? It was dangerous, there was no guestion about that, but was he taking risks to help the others or was he trying to get himself killed? If the answer was later, he wasn't doing very good job at it as he had stayed alive for more than a year while taking down criminal elements of Omega. But on the other hand, when had his job ever ended the way he had planned it?

"I mean," Sidonis continued when his commander didn't answer his guestion. "We have been hitting on the three major gangs on the Omega, plus several of the smaller ones. Sooner or later they have to take action against us... Against you. You might be known as Archangel, but it doesn't make you immortal."

"If you're scared, I won't stop you from leaving," Garrus said feeling disgusted. Out of his eleven men, Sidonis was one of the best—if he was starting to lose faith in what they were doing, how long before the others would break ranks?

"I didn't mean that, Garrus," Sidonis answered. "I'm just telling you that all these mad risks you are taking are going to come back and bite you in the ass at some point. You are good and our team is strong, but sooner or later the mercs are going to get enough of us. They want us gone."

"We don't always get what we want in life, do we?" Garrus retorted acidly—thinking his own life he could name only one time when he had felt fully contented with it, and that had been when he had served Shepard on the _Normandy_. "They hate us, I know, but as long as they hate each other more, we should be fine."

"What if they join forces to take us down?" Sidonis asked.

"When stars fall, Sidonis," Garrus laughed. "They are mercs. Only thing they can trust is that they are going to try and backstabb one another at every turn. If they try to join forces we can just sit back and enjoy the show, when they destroy each other."

"I hope you're right," Sidonis said as they headed out from the cargo area. "But anyway, I got this one contact I need to meet, so I'll se you later when I get back."

"Yeah," Garrus said. "See you."

As Garrus watched Sidonis walking away he found himself envying his contacts outside their own group. When he had left C-Sec almost one and half a year ago he had practically severed all his ties with any friends he had had. He had spoken with his sister only three times after coming to Omega, and he had entirely lost contact with Tali and Liara—Wrex had never been overly talkative in the first place, but they had gotten along while working under Shepard. Last time he had hear about his friends Tali had been accepted back to her own people after succesful Pilgrimage, Liara had been doing something rather mysterious on Illium and Wrex had been on Tuchanka rising rapidly through the ranks of his clan. But that had been more than a year ago...

For the first time he found himself guestioning if he had made a right choice leaving C-Sec and giving up his Spectre training. Tali and Liara had been so certain that Shepard had wanted him to become a Spectre, but he had grown frustrated and given up. Now he would never know if he really was proper Spectre material, but even more he was wondering if Shepard would have accepted what he had done with his life—propably not.

A tiny, flickering count down number appeared at the corner of Garrus' visor. 23:59.

Less than 24 hours away was the moment when he, Liara, Wrex and Tali had agreed to take a drink in Shepard's honour each year.

Two years...

Lost...

Alone...

Looking at the numbers scrolling down minutes to the anniversary of Shepard's death Garrus thought that this time he might not be contented to take just one drink. Yes. He would buy a bottle of strongest spirit he could find on Omega—and on Omega you could find very potent stuff, indeed—and then he would drink untill he passed out.

* * *

"You really should relax, Garrus," Sidonis said as they returned to their base after yet another raid on the gangs. "I don't know what's wrong with you, but you have been kicking yourself even harder lately."

Garrus didn't even bother to look at his companion as he weaved their car through the traffic. How could he explain to Sidonis the moral hangover he had developed during the previous month? He had gone way over his limits with drink when remembering Shepard and concequently hated himself for it, as he was sure she would have hated him for it.

"Maybe you should take a night out," Sidonis suggested. "Go to Afterlife, hang around with some asari girl and just have fun for a change."

"No," Garrus answered firmly. He noticed that Sidonis changed a worried glance with the two other members of the team who were in the same car with them.

"_They can't understand_," Garrus thought knowing full well, that if he did let go of his selfcontrol like that, he would just end up feeling worse than ever. "_I'm not sure if I understand myself. Why do I still miss her in this way? Why do I miss her in this way in the first place? We meant nothing to each other, we were just a commander and her trooper_."

But if he was really honest with himself he had become rather obsessed with Shepard's memory after her death—even his own sister had accused him of having a fetish for the commander. He imagined her now as some sort of a guardian angel hanging over his shoulder, watching his every action and judging them right or wrong but never telling him which they were. When ever he was planning something the thought always began: how Shepard would have solved this or that situation?

Garrus was acutely aware that he was not Shepard, he couldn't know how she would have reacted, what she would have done. He had tried to be like her, he had wanted to become a Spectre like her, a leader of his group as she had been their leader, but it just didn't feel right. How she had made it all look so easy and simple? Maybe he just didn't have the same heroic drive she had had.

The rest of the way to their base was covered in silence, but Garrus knew that the conversation would not be forgotten—on the contrary, it would be repeated among his team and they would speculate on his reaction.

"_Let them_," he thought angrily. "_What do I care_?"

Of course the problem was that he did care. He was constantly wondering what his team thought about him, what they were thinking about their work, what was troubling them outside their group... He wanted them to share their worries with him so that he could find ways to help—just like Shepard had done with the crew of the _Normandy_—but he didn't want to burden them with his worries and personal dilemmas. And he was definitely not ready to talk about Shepard with them.

Later in the evening he could hear some of his men talking in their common room which overlooked a bridge they had set up as ambush site for any mercs trying to attack them. He always had two men on guard there as it was their best defensive position, but the room had been made as comfortable as possible to encourage people to stay there even when they were not doing guard duty. A short passage led to the rooms they used for sleeping, as well as to his personal room which was a mad combination of sleeping quarters, office and armory.

Through his open door Garrus could hear his team mates moving around in the common room, but he could not see them, nor could they see him, and apparently they had not noticed that his door was open.

"..if he has a lady love somewhere?" one of his men—he thought it might be Butler—asked the others.

"We've been with him for... what... almost a year?" one of the others said. "And we have never seen him go out with anyone. I would put my money on a broken heart."

"Hmm..." Sidonis' voice joined the conversation. "If he has gotten his heart broken by a woman, it might explain his nearly suicidal behaviour. Maybe he really does have a deathwish because some bitch has abandoned him. But having some fun with an asari might still help him to get over it."

Garrus couldn't listen anymore. Angrily he slammed the control that closed the door before he grapped the closest item and almost threw it at the closed door. Only thing that prevented him from throwing the object was the fact that it was the group photograph of Shepard's team, taken in the docking port with an angle which showed _Normandy_'s name on the background. He could be as mad as hell, but that picture made him stop short—it was the only thing he still carried with him to remind himself of who and what he had once been.

Slowly he put the picture back on his table, turning it so that he could see it from his bed, lied down and looked at their solem faces in the photo. Shepard's unruly hair haunted his mind even when he fell asleep.


	5. Betrayal

Chapter 5 – Betrayal

After his angry burst Garrus noticed that his men had started to keep eye on him, especially Sidonis, but they did their best to be subtle about it. He didn't want to tell them off because he didn't want to start another argument—his men would have just claimed that they had not done anything—but after the situation had gone on almost two weeks, it started to get on his nerves.

Sitting on the balcony's rail and leaning his back on one of the supporting pillars Garrus kept an eye out on the bridge below him. His rifle was cradled on his lap, ready to be used if anyone tried to attack his men, who were repositioning the crates they used as barricades. Sidonis was on the other side of the room leaning his rifle on the pillar while he watched the work.

"I actually wanted to talk to you, Garrus," Sidonis said suddenly, but didn't turn his head. "I might have a job. There is a contact who wants to meet us."

"Us" Garrus repeated throwing a sideways glance at his associate—usually Sidonis handled these kinds of meetings himself—but the other turian was still looking out over the bridge.

"You and me," Sidonis confirmed. "Northern transportation hub, one of the warehouses. At noon."

Garrus had always hated meetings with criminal informants—one of the reasons he had been happy to take Sidonis in his team had been the possibility of sending him to meet the contacts instead of going himself. He despised them all, "rats leaving the sinking ship"—a human saying he had picked up from Shepard—trying to save their own sorry hide and hoping to get few credits from him and his men so that they could clear the dust of Omega from their boots before their bosses learned that they had sold them out.

"Set it up," he sighed. Liked it or not, the backstabbing criminals were his way to the heart of these mercenary gangs where he could hit them where it hurt the most; he needed them. Even in C-Sec there had always been a habit of letting smaller criminals go if they in turn helped to bring down a big fish. But that still didn't mean that he had to like it.

"I'll look into it right away, if you don't mind?" Sidonis suggested standing up from his position. "I'll send someone to replace me."

"It seems like they are almost done, anyway," Garrus said looking at the men below them. "See you at the warehouse, Sidonis."

"Bye, Garrus," Sidonis said putting his rifle over his shoulder and heading down to the main room of their fortress.

Moments later Garrus saw Sidonis change a few words with the men he walked past while he headed over the bridge and disappeared to the building on the other side. The reorganizing of their barricades was nearly complete and the men headed back in as soon as they got everything set up.

About an hour later Garrus headed out from their base to meet Sidonis and the contact the other turian had found.

When he arrived to the warehouse they used for meetings Garrus discovered that it was empty and that send a cold chill up his spine. Where was Sidonis? Even if the contact had failed to show up, his team member should have been present. Something was wrong, terribly wrong.

Garrus grew more worried by every minute while he checked out all the corners of the warehouse in case there was someone hiding there, or maybe in case Sidonis was lying somewhere wounded or dead. But he found nothing, and that really made alarms blare in his head. He tried to make a radio contact with Sidonis, but got nothing—either the turian was out of range or his radio was turned off. He tried to contact the base, but it was beyond the range as well.

"_Damn it_," he cursed silently. "_What the hell is going on here_?"

He had to make a decision. Should he stay in the warehouse waiting for Sidonis or should he go back to their base?

Suddenly he came to think of Sidonis' behaviour that morning. He had been odd, at an edge, and the time he had brought up the topic of the meeting had been strange. And suddenly Garrus realized that his team mate had not once looked at him when they had been talking. Sidonis had purposefully avoided him staying on the other side of the room using the lookout duty as an excuse—his so called friend had not even looked him in the eyes before leaving their stronghold. "_Goodbye, Garrus_," Sidonis had said when walking out. "_Goodbye_..."

Sidonis had known that something was up, Garrus could see it clearly now, he had clearly not expected to see Garrus ever again, never to speak with him again.

"_He set me up_," Garrus thought feeling anger rise inside him. "_But set me up for what_?"

Garrus had no choice; he had to hurry back to their base. Whatever Sidonis had done—why ever the other turian had lured him here—had to have something to do with him being the Archangel, the most hated vigilante on Omega.

When Garrus stepped out from the warehouse he was surprised that there were no snipers waiting for him on the outside, he covered the ground between the door and his car in half-run. As he started the vehicle he almost expected it to be rigged to explode, but it didn't. He broke all the speed regulations—he was in fact surprised that Omega _had_speed regulations, as the whole place was just a huge hive of criminals—on his way back to their base.

Garrus' first thought when he saw the base was relief; it looked peaceful and there was no sign of mercenaries. But immediately the feeling turned into sinking horror as the whole place was even too quiet. He tried to call his men over the suit radio, but got no answer.

"_No, no, no, no_," he repeated to himself as he hurried into the main room in the lower floor.

The first body was half way through the room: his salarian explosives expert laid there curled into a small ball behind one of the crates. There were two more in the lower room and one on the stairs leading up to the common room.

"Arch..." the man on the stairs whispered. "Archangel..."

"Butler!" Garrus called hurrying to help him. "What happened?"

"The mercs..." the dying man answered. "All of them... Suns... Eclipse and Pack too. Too many, Garrus, too many..."

"Hold on, Butler," Garrus said trying to stem the flow of bright red blood from the man's wound. "I'll get help for you."

"Too late..." Butler whispered his voice growing weaker by every word. "We couldn't hold them off... Glad to serve... angel..."

Butler's body twitched a couple more times before falling limb back on the stairs. For a second Garrus stared at his hands, red with human blood, but a sound from the upper floor suddenly made him jump up. He found his batarian tech lying at the doorway leading to their sleeping quarters, but from the second he got there Garrus knew he was too late to help his team mate.

Two hours later his ten companions were resting in ten graves he had dug for them under their base—and Sidonis was still unaccounted for, while Garrus was the only one left standing. He had no means of marking the graves of his friends and he suspected that very soon there would be no-one left to remember where they were—the mercs had taken out his men to get to him, so he didn't believe his own life expectancy to be overly long anymore.

"_Just as well_," he thought heading back up to their base and collapsing the roof of the underground passage with shaped charges as he left. "_Everything has been going from bad to worse for two years now, and going down while taking out these damned mercs is a good way to die_."

Studying the damage mercs had done to their base Garrus noticed that the attackers had wrecked the whole place, but for some strange reason left all the weaponry untouched. They had even broken through the locked door to his personal quarters and smashed practically everything. On the floor, face down, was his most cherished possession—the crew photo—but when he picked it up, he saw that the attackers had found one last way of insulting him: the picture had been badly burned.

Gone were Wrex and his scars, gone was Liara and her gentle smile, gone was Tali and her quarian enviro-suit, gone was Ashley Williams and her trade-mark rifle she had been leaning on—gone was Garrus himself. But what hurt him the most was that also Shepard—hero of the galaxy, saviour of the Citadel and the rest of that crap—had been burned out from the picture. Her unruly hair, her shining smile and bright eyes were replaced by burned pieces of plastic. The last thing Garrus had carried with him from his previous life was ruined.

With a heavy heart Garrus put the twisted frame back on his table and turned on his computer. One of the things he had demanded from his men was that they told him who were their next of kin, so if something would happen to them, he could let their families know about their fate. He wrote ten messages to ten people who would never see their loved ones again. Almost as an afterthought he sent one more message.

_ Dear Sol. Everything has gone to hell. I love you, mom and dad. Goodbye. Garrus_

Garrus realised that it sounded like a suicide message, but that was all right, he didn't expect to survive for long and it didn't really make any difference if he died by his own hand or by the hand of the three mercenary groups that were sure coming after him in any moment. He knew he was a dead man walking and his only hope was to take as many mercs with him as he could.


End file.
